


two-buck canuck

by stiction



Category: Tanis (Podcast), The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Episode Tag, Family Dinners, Multi, Polyamorous Character, Recreational Drug Use, Road Trips, shameless canadian stereotyping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 09:57:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7613662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stiction/pseuds/stiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Which is worse,” Alex muses. “Hypnotherapy, or dinner with our parents?”</p><p>“Which is worse,” Nic counters. “Dinner with our parents, or trying to have an open and honest discussion with Dr. Strand?”</p><p>---</p><p>Or, there's no way Alex and Nic took a road trip to Canada without getting roped into a family dinner. </p><p>Post-Ep 207, Pre-Ep 208</p>
            </blockquote>





	two-buck canuck

**Author's Note:**

  * For [harperuth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/harperuth/gifts).



> harperuth: i love Nic and Alex's visit home but so far there's NO PARENTS I CALL FOUL  
> stiction: they're canadian, wouldn't their parents be like "We got you hockey tickets!" "...isn't the season over?" "oh alex, hockey season is NEVER over!"  
> harperuth: HAVE SOME MILK BAGS KIDS  
>  
> 
> canadian content warning: im from new york and have spent approximately five (5) cumulative days in canada and know zero (0) real-life canadians. please take all jokes with an approximate pound of salt

Alex used to love road trips. The awful snacks, the good music--just you and your buddies and the road before you. But somewhere between demons and family tragedies and her inescapable insomnia, they’ve lost a little bit of the magic.

So, Canada. B.C. Vancouver, even! The possibility of solving even one tiny corner of the Rubik’s cube that has become her job’s work. At this point, Alex would kill to feel the excitement of triumph. Metaphorically.

And of course it’s a beautiful weekend to make the long highway drive. She packs her changes of clothes, business for the conference, leisure for the drive, something in the middle for dinners and potential impromptu interviews. They’ve got the (slightly healthier) snacks, and even if her iPod was stolen, Nic has a giant CD case of what he considers the classics.

For just a little while, it’s just her and Nic and the road before them.

But.

“Okay,” Nic says, as soon as they’re on the highway. “We need to talk.”

Alex’s heart goes cold.

“Okay,” she parrots, but slowly. “What about?”

Amalia? The show? Jesus, she thinks, are they going to push the repiloting issue again? Maybe even--Strand? Nic may not be the only one committing indiscretions, but he _is_ the only one obvious enough to have it broadcast via iTunes.

“Our parents,” Nic responds finally.

“Our parents.”

“Yeah. Um. You know how they can be.”

“Wonderful, but nosy?”

“The phrase ‘empty nesters’ comes to mind,” Nic says, and sighs. “I may have let slip that we were going north this weekend.”

“Nic,” Alex groans, rolling her head back against the seat. “You didn’t.”

“Well,” he says. “I kind of did.”

“And?”

“And, my mother mentioned it to your mother at church last Sunday.”

Alex picks at a loose thread in the car seat. “I thought we agreed--no parents on the podcast.”

Nic winces. “We did. But… hear me out. We can have a nice dinner with them tonight without a mic in sight, right?”

He waits for her to respond, then prompts again: “Right?”

“Yeah,” Alex sighs. “I can manage that.”

“I _did_ also do my best to get you out of the doghouse, you know.”

“Appreciated,” Alex says, pressing her face into the warm window.

They make it to the border and cross without incident, and Alex takes the wheel.

“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” Nic asks, and Alex rolls her eyes.

“No, Nic,” she drawls. “I’m ready to faint at any time, and value your life and mine so little that I’m willing to get behind the wheel anyway.”

Nic holds his hands up, shrugs.

“I’ve had enough of the Steely Dan to make me want to crash, man.” She reaches down before they pull back out onto the road, and fiddles with the radio. It’s times like this that she really misses her old iPod.

“Styx?” Nic suggests, flapping his CD case at her.

“Why are we friends?”

“Because you can’t resist my boyish charm and dashing Canadian good looks?”

“Right.” Alex taps the steering wheel, whistles through her teeth, caves. “You got any Fleetwood Mac in there?”

“You got it.”

* * *

 

It’s a few hours from the border to their hometown, and Alex’s nerves are so jangled that her stomach starts to hurt.

Sometimes, especially lately, she forgets just how well Nic knows her. She’s reminded of it again when he sets a hand on her shoulder.

“You know they’re not mad, right? They just worry about you. My mom goes crazy whenever I don’t answer her calls for more than a few days.”

“Didn’t sound like worry when my mom was sulking on the phone,” Alex says. “At least know I know why. She can’t have been too happy to hear I was coming so close to home from your mom.”

“Like I said,” Nic tells her, squeezing her shoulder again. “I did my best to smooth it over.”

She shoots him a smile.

“At least Stevie Nicks isn't mad at me.”

"An earth mother is for life," Nic says solemnly.

* * *

 

“This is weird,” Nic says for the tenth time since they passed the county line, and Alex can’t help but agree.

“I’m normally only here for Christmas. Otherwise, they come visit me.”

“Yeah, it’s really green without all that snow.”

Alex kicks her feet up on the dash and polishes off the shake she got at a roadside stand in the last town they drove through. “Did you forget that Canada isn’t in a constant state of tundra?”

“A little,” Nic admits.

They pass their old high school, looking lonely, surrounded by a copse of trees.

“I guess it feels like it’s not here for _us_ anymore.”

“It’s not home, that’s for sure,” Nic says.

They’re quiet through the end of _Lorelei_ , passing a few ponds and huge, old houses.

“Do you think it’s weird?” Alex asks, after the question’s been rolling around in her mouth for a bit.

“I think a lot of things are weird,” Nic says. “Can you specify?”

“That we’re still friends.”

She doesn’t look at him, but keeps her eye on the road. It was a bad question, too steeped in their recent past, too close to nostalgia for the way they used to be friends. The sun is bright and burning the tops of her feet through the windshield. She’s going to have a bizarre tan by the time she gets home to Seattle.

“Not really?” Nic shrugs. “I mean, we spent a lot of time together at college, and we got into the same business, working for the same company. And I mean, I can tolerate you most of the time.”

“Shut up,” she scoffs, the nostalgia blinking out like a running thought. “You’re not too bad yourself.”

“But seriously,” Nic continues. “There are some people you just end up tied to, for better or worse. I like to think we’re for the better, personally.”

Alex hums in agreement. They hit the end of the Fleetwood Mac album an hour ago, and she was feeling gracious enough to cede the driver’s seat and the choice of music to him.

He picked Styx.

And air drummed his way through _Renegade_. She hates him a little. She’s secure enough in their friendship to admit that.

* * *

 

“Alright,” Nic says. They’re parked across the street from his mom’s house, Alex’s parents’ house sitting dark next door. "We can do this. It'll be... fun."

“Which is worse,” Alex muses, when they still haven't gotten out of the car. “Hypnotherapy, or dinner with our parents?”

“Which is worse,” Nic counters. “Dinner with our parents, or trying to have an open and honest discussion with Dr. Strand?”

Alex snorts.

“Let’s just go,” she says, slapping Nic’s arm. “I hear your mother makes an amazing meatless croque monsieur.”

“Oh, she does. I’m just dreading your mother’s meatloaf.”

“Aren’t we all?”

* * *

 

Alex’s mother is… affectionate. A tight hugger. Her dad is a rib-breaker--she can hear Nic’s surprised _oof_ when her dad pulls him in for a hug.

“Alex, honey,” her mother whispers suddenly, letting go of the embrace and holding her at arm’s length. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a boyfriend?”

“Boyfriend?” Alex repeats dumbly.

Nic shifts behind her mother and gives her a thumbs up, motions for her to roll with it.

“I. Uh. We’re… We’ve only been seeing each other for a little while?”

Her mother clucks her tongue. “You have the complexion of a woman in love,” she teases, pinching Alex’s arm. “You know that I’d be happy you found someone, regardless of how new it was.”

“It’s--” Alex swallows, finds herself thinking of. Well. “He’s a little eccentric.”

“You’ll have to tell me all about him after dinner,” her mother says. When she turns to lead them into Ms. Silver’s dining room, Alex shoots Nic a look and draws a line across her neck.

“I totally saved your bacon,” Nic whispers as they pause in the doorway.

“And doomed me to the baby talk for the fiftieth time,” she hisses back.

“Hey,” Nic says, nudging her with his elbow. “At least they’ve stopped asking us when _we’re_ going to get together.”

Alex snorts despite herself, and Nic smiles. She adds a quiet but sincere “A- _men_ ,” for good measure, and then Nic’s mother walks up with open arms.

“Alex!”

Ms. Silver wraps her in a hug that smells like locally made organic herb candles. She’s always been a solid hugger, but Alex is still surprised by the strength of her arms. It makes her feel fourteen again, with red eyes and tear-stained cheeks, crying on Nic’s back porch to someone willing to listen about things her mother wasn’t.

“You look so tired, Alexandra,” she murmurs when she pulls back. Her palm is warm and dry against Alex’s cheek. “How much weight are you carrying on those shoulders?”

It’s exactly the kind of thing Ms. Silver just up and says, the kind of thing that still makes Alex choke up a little. The woman’s got a talent for sensing stress.

“It’s just--” Alex has to stop, clear her throat a little before she continues. “It’s just work stuff.”

“Yes, yes,” Ms. Silver says. “Nic did tell me something about why you two were coming up for the weekend. You’ll have to unpack some with me later, alright? We should get some good food in you two.”

Alex should’ve expected a potluck, knowing their parents. Ms. Silver would insist on cooking for everyone, and her own mother would be appalled at the thought of showing up to a dinner without bringing something she made.

And it does look great. Her appetite’s been awful lately, but looking at the spread on the table makes her thankful for the hospitality of home.

They sit her across from Nic, who’s still a little flushed from when Alex’s mom fixed his collar and tried to button his open flannel for him.

“Looks good,” she says, fidgeting with her fork and knife, and her mother pats her shoulder and smiles.

Her mother must have missed her a lot, since she skips saying grace and goes straight to heaping food onto Alex’s plate.

“You look so thin,” her mother says, “Are you even eating down there?”

“I… eat,” Alex mutters.

“She eats!” Nic pipes up. “Sometimes at the station, sometimes in-between editing, but I’ve seen it, y’know… with my own two eyes.”

Ms. Silver laughs, but Alex’s mom frowns and adds an extra spoonful of gravy onto Alex’s plate.

Alex’s dad hooks Nic into a conversation about some recent bear sightings in their neck of the woods. Ms. Silver flinches a little at the mention of the forest, and Alex catches her following the conversation until it shifts. Her mother talks about how one of Alex’s old friends from church is having a baby soon and Nic, god bless him, interrupts the upcoming Baby Talk™ with a story from the station.  

When he’s done, her mother cuts in with: “And how about you, Nic?”

“What about me?”

She laughs a little, her knowing look just a little too knowing. “Any special ladies down in Washington for you?”

Alex shoves a bite of vegan croque monsieur in her mouth to avoid smirking as Nic fumbles for an answer.

“I’ve been seeing someone,” he says. “A… computer technician.”

She spares a moment of pity for his mother, knowing how doggedly _her_ mother will go for details on Sunday. It’s hard to feel bad for Nic, though--despite how much she knows he feels guilty about choosing one partner to talk about. It’s not like he can show up to dinner and talk about his girlfriend, his other girlfriend, _and_ his boyfriend.

It’s a complicated setup. Alex has seen his Google calendar.

“Sounds smart,“ Alex’s mother remarks. “What’s her name?”

“Am--”

Alex kicks him under the table.

“Mmmikayla,” Nic says, which kind of works. “She does IT work. In Everett. We… get together on the weekends.”

“Whatever happened to Amalia?” Alex’s mom asks. “She was a nice girl.”

“She’s back in Russia,” Alex cuts in, before the hole Nic’s digging turns into his grave. “Off on another story. You know how she is.”

Both of their mothers nod, a little sad. Alex’s mother had definitely been harboring some secret wedding wishes for the two of them way back when.

“And _your_ mystery man?” Ms. Silver says. Her eyes are on Alex now. “Give us a little something.”

“He’s a… historian,” Alex fudges.

Ms. Silver’s eyes light up; she reaches to lay a hand on Alex’s wrist like a high school girl ready to gossip.

“Really? What’s his specialty?”

Belatedly, Alex remembers the degree hanging in Ms. Silver’s study: a Master’s degree in history from UBC.

“American history,” Alex says, decides to go all in on it because why the hell not. “He was going to be a teacher, but decided against it in the end--didn’t like people as much as he liked books.”

“Understandable,” Alex’s father says, and she shoots him a smile. “That’s why I retired so early.”

Relieved to be switching topics, Alex leans across the table towards him. “Oh, come on,” she teases. “We all know you just hated grading papers for students who didn’t know the difference between Cabot and Cartier.”

Her father shudders. “Right. Had nothing to do with the educational reforms either, eh?”

Alex’s mother pats him on the shoulder. “It’s a shame, all right.”

The three of them, her parents and Ms. Silver, gets sucked into a debate on British Columbia’s education reform that Alex takes as her cue to clear the table. Nic, thank god, picks up the message in her look right away, and the two of them set to getting all the dirty dishes to the kitchen with barely any notice from their parents.

“That went alright,” Nic says while the sink is filling up. “Better than I expected, I guess.”

“It wasn’t too bad,” Alex agrees, shrugging. “Good call on the fake boyfriend angle. I really do not need my mother to try matchmaking again.”

“Glad I could save you from a dim future of boring coffee dates.”

They stand side-by-side at the sink, Nic washing while Alex dries.

“What do you think your mom would say about your love square?” Alex asks after a few minutes. “Like, yeah, she’s all about free love and interconnectedness, but… Where you’re concerned?”

“I think she’s got a hunch,” Nic says. He spends a few seconds more than he needs to scrubbing at a spot on one plate. “She asks some pretty specific questions sometimes.”

“Really?”

“And I’ve never asked, but I’m pretty sure she was wrapped up in something similar in her twenties.”

“What?” Alex lets her mouth hang open in mock affront. “Your mother, center of a poly knot just like her son.”

Nic knocks his hip into hers. “More likely than you’d think?”

“How do you know?” Alex presses.

“There’s a whole bunch of old pictures of her post-college that are just kind of… incriminating, I guess. And the way she talks about her life back then, it's pretty vague who she was in love with and when. I'd be willing to bet there was more than a little overlap between all of them.”

"Yeah?" 

"Well, looking at the pictures," Nic muses, looking out the kitchen window, "Let's just say there are a few possibilities as to who my dad was."

"How very _Mamma Mia_ of you," Alex laughs. 

Nic flicks a handful of bubbles at her, and she splashes back with some of the rinsewater.

“I think she’d be cool with it,” he says finally. “I’m not sure it’ll ever be a thing--everyone meeting my parents.”

“I think MK would rather set fire to her laptop,” Alex says, and Nic laughs. “Geoff would be over the moon, though.”

“Yeah, he would be,” Nic agrees. His voice is firmly in the “sappy” category when he says it.

“Let’s just hope my parents don’t insist upon meeting my fake boyfriend.”

“We can invent a fake breakup?” Nic suggests. “Or a fake history conference.”

“Noooo way. My dad will want to go.”

“True. Fake breakup it is. We can imply that the sexual tension between us was just too much, and you couldn’t res-”

“Shut _up_ ,” Alex groans. She slaps Nic with the damp towel and he ducks away, grinning. “You already have two girlfriends, asshole. Don’t push your luck.”

Nic ducks his head so she can’t see him smiling.

By the time they’re done with cleanup, her parents have exhausted every angle of debate with regards to Canadian educational progress. She hugs Ms. Silver goodbye, slaps Nic gently on the cheek for good measure, and retreats next door with her parents--who are, thankfully, tired enough to skip post-dinner tea and go straight to bed instead.

* * *

 

Alex’s parents have turned her room into a “guest room”.

She calls it the “guest room” because yes, they painted the walls a harmless baby blue, and yes, the sheets and comforter are a neutral navy color, and yes, they’ve taken down all of teenaged Alex’s punk band posters, but.

But Alex has a burst of fond and chagrined memory, and pulls the dead electrical socket under the window out to find that her pack of Belmonts is still stuffed in there next to the wires. She laughs to herself and tucks them into the front pocket on her overnight bag. They’d be awful to smoke now, worse than they were when she bought them, and she’s mostly left cigarettes behind since high school, but she wants them with her now.  

And on the top shelf in the closet, her mother put some of the things they never figured out what to do with. A beat up record player Alex bought for six dollars at a yard sale. Some old boxes of letters and birthday cards.

So the room is. Well, a “guest room”, she guesses, but in a lot of ways it’s still sort of hers.

The bed’s a queen now, that’s new, and Alex is grateful for her parents’ disposable income and sense of hospitality, since it feels like a dream to lay down on. Without intending to, she thinks again of Strand. The possibility of him ever meeting her parents, and what it might be like.

She imagines him sitting stiffly in their cushy living room. Politely accepting her mother’s tea, shaking her father’s hand. And, of course, if he stayed the night her parents would graciously suggest that Alex take the couch, but. Well.

Alex is an adult now. An adult who still remembers all the squeaky spots to avoid on the stairs. An adult whose old room now has a pretty roomy queen-sized bed. It doesn’t matter much that bringing Strand home is a near impossibility.

She’s about to get changed and hit the hay when something taps on her bedroom window. Her stomach goes tight and panicked for a full three seconds before she can work up the nerve to raise the blinds.

The tapping sounds again as her hands touch the cord, and suddenly she remembers just how far she is from Seattle. Alex pulls the cord, raises both the blinds and one of her eyebrows as Nic tosses another pebble across the gap between their houses.

“You couldn’t have texted me?” she whispers, once the window is up.

“Thought I’d go old-school,” Nic whispers back. “You should see it in here. My mom’s barely touched the room since I moved out.”

“I’ve got a bigger bed, and _much_ lamer walls.”

“Hm.” Nic glances down through the narrow space between their windows, and then towards the empty street. “Well.”

He ducks beneath the edge of the windowsill, then pops back up with a small plastic baggie in hand.

“Want to relive our glory days?”

“Oh,” Alex laughs. “I think you know I do.”

 


End file.
